[skt5]

> create a management committee, possibly with a rotating chairship, and in general give the employees more say over the direction of the company they work for".

this sounds very similar to a government where politicians are elected (un)fairly. likely, this just presents another set of trade-offs.

[danaris]

Whenever you have to make decisions involving multiple humans, tradeoffs are pretty much a guarantee.

However, over the past few hundred years, we've been gradually coming to the collective conclusion that autocracy is inferior to democracy for systems involving larger numbers of people and decisions of larger stakes.

I don't see why that should apply any less to replacing the hierarchical model of companies, where a CEO can walk into any room and say "You're fired," with a (more-)democratic system, than it did to replacing kingdoms, where a king could walk into any room and say "Off with your head," with a representative democracy.

[HTTP418]

It's a very different situation. In a country you cannot escape the king, he will be the absolute ruler until he dies. Since there was no escape eventually they were replaced with democracy. You can willingly leave a corporation at anytime you want. Autocracy have an advantage over democracy when it comes to speed of change. Sometimes it's good change (progress) and sometimes it's bad change (i.e. over-hiring). Large corporations that become democratic will lose the ability to react quickly. In order for such companies to survive, the environment must remain consistent (no competition, no new technology).

[Apocryphon]

> Large corporations that become democratic will lose the ability to react quickly.

Not really clear that corporations that stay autocratic do much better. As with kingdoms that turn into sprawling empires, all you're left is a bunch of middle management petty kings who the CEO-emperor delegates power to, who might not be much better. Bureaucratic rot sets in.

[danaris]

You can willingly leave a corporation the same way you could willingly leave a kingdom: easily if you're rich, and with great effort and danger if you're not.